Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

“ W hat a gorgeous dress!” Lydia exclaimed, delicately picking up the fabric of Barbara’s skirt.

“Darling, this is better than anything I could have lent to you,” Helena noted in awe. “Where have you been hiding this one? Why haven’t you worn it before?”

The lie, a small, well-practiced thing, slipped out of Barbara’s mouth with very little guilt as she replied, “I found it among my mother’s things. It just needed some adjusting.”

Guilt, like an inky cloud, settled over her as she let the lie come out. While she did at times leave out information about her life when talking to them, she had never lied. A frown threatened to pull her smile apart, but she refused to let it. The dress was beautiful, as they had both said, and today was just another opportunity to get her and her father out of their financial troubles.

She waited, her stomach churning, for her friends to pick apart her lie. But instead of questions, only more compliments came.

Slowly, after a few minutes, she settled and smoothed her hands over her new dress. To Ambrose’s credit, he certainly did seem to know a thing or two about what looked good on a woman’s figure. She had never paid much mind to fit or frill, as long as the gown stayed on her person.

The gown, much like the pink one, had various hues. Only instead of pinks, the layers of fabric were emerald green, forest green, a shimmery, see-through gold, and a deep, earth-tone brown that glinted with bits of dark purple. The sleeves were more like ties at her shoulders, knotting up the fabric in the smallest little bundle to cup the two slopes. Another knot of fabric was gathered at her right hip, giving her a Romanesque hourglass figure. The only part about the dress she did not like was the cut of the bosom. While her breasts were not particularly large, they certainly were not small either, and they strained against the tight, deep V of the neckline.

To offset the bounty of cleavage that was on display there, she actually did rummage through her mother’s old things that she’d hidden away in the attic—things she did not want her father to sell—and donned a large, single emerald necklace that hung from a simple gold chain. The matching earrings, simple and elegant like the necklace, were wrapped in tissue in the tiniest bundle beside the necklace.

“Are the three of you going to stay cloistered by the refreshments table again?” Ambrose asked, his tone teasing as he joined them. “Or are you actually going to go out and enjoy the party for once?”

“When we are together, we are the party,” Helena scoffed, raising her nose to her brother.

Barbara didn’t bother to stifle her laugh. She had been debating all morning if she had been dreading or looking forward to seeing Ambrose again. Their last encounter had left her furious in a new type of way—but it had also had her thoughts straying toward Ambrose every spare second. Seeing him now, being teased by his little sister and taking it, she decided she was not entirely disappointed by his presence.

Today, he wore a beige suit with a sky-blue shirt—a startling contrast to the black attire he normally wore in the evenings. The softer colors made him look less like a lion on the hunt and more like an actual human trying to enjoy a day with his own kind.

“The party is not fun if you do not involve the other guests,” Ambrose teased back, his eyes flitting over to Barbara.

She could have sworn she saw approval in his eyes as he looked her up and down. The unbridled smirk on his face when he met her eyes confirmed this for her, and though she glared back at him, she felt pleased that she had learned her first lesson successfully.

“Ugh, leave us be, brother,” Helena groaned, flicking her fan open in a dismissive manner. “I am in the company of friends. I will not wander off alone, I assure you.”

“I have faith in that,” Ambrose quipped, obviously unbothered by her disrespectful tone. “I am not here to monitor your safety, however. I have come to ask Lady Barbara if she would join me in a dance.”

Barbara was not sure whose jaw dropped the widest as all three women looked at him in stunned silence.

“You are?” Helena blurted out beside her.

Ambrose, of course, paid no mind to their confusion and smiled at Barbara as he stepped up to her and held his hand out.

“You look especially lovely today, Lady Barbara,” he said to her, his lips curling into a wide smile, “That dress seems positively perfect for you. Perhaps a dance would be just the thing to show it off.”

Almost as if another spirit was controlling her body, Barbara felt her hand lift to his, feeling strange sparks in her palm as he enveloped it and led her to the dance floor.

“What are you doing?” Barbara seethed, her rage clear despite the pleasant smile on her face.

“Glad to see you got over that momentary bout of shock,” Ambrose quipped, guiding her into the dance.

It was the perfect time, he had decided, to sweep Barbara onto the dance floor to show her off, and he told her so. There were only a few couples scattered across the dance floor, while most were lazily caught between watching the dancers and playing their games. With his lead, he could twirl her around in her new dress prettily, perhaps even make her laugh, and he knew that it would catch the desired attention.

“I did not know you were going to ask me to dance,” Barbara replied indignantly, her smile drooping a bit. “You could have warned me you were going to do this. I probably looked like a fish out of water with my mouth open like that.”

“Trust me, Barbara, men are not thinking of fish when you open that pretty mouth of yours so widely.”

The words came out blunt and unfiltered, startling even himself, but he would not apologize for them. Even when Barbara’s green and gold eyes widened, and her mouth threatened to drop open again. Instead, he smiled broadly, as if she had just said something wonderfully witty, and twirled her.

“You are abhorrent,” Barbara whispered with disgust as he pulled her back into his arms.

“And you are beautiful in this dress,” Ambrose murmured.

Pleasure coursed through him as he saw a virginal blush color her cheeks, and for a second, the brash Barbara he knew ducked her head and became a flattered maiden. Something in his chest swelled as he saw the transition—something that whispered, Mine.

He shook his head, trying to toss away the sudden and unwanted thought.“Perhaps my sister did a service to you, after all, with that abhorrent pink thing you tried to pull off as fashionable by showing me your potential,” he said condescendingly, needing to push away the strange sensation creeping up on him. “I needed to see you at your worst before I could make you your best.”

The glowering fire Ambrose knew to live behind Barbara’s eyes sparked to life, and something settled in him again. Disgust. Loathing. Yes, that was what was supposed to be between them.

“You were almost nice,” she bit out.

Ambrose was sure she wanted to say and do more, but both of them had noticed that some gentlemen had started to watch them from the edge of the dance floor. He spotted two he would be willing to let Barbara talk to and made a mental note to send the third off toward the freshly widowed and attention-starved Lady Carrister. His eyes flicked to the dance floor next, taking in the couples around them.

“I have some advice,” he stated in a low tone as he brought his eyes back to Barbara.

“My dancing is fine,” she snapped. “I am not missing any steps.”

Ambrose raised an amused eyebrow at her, letting his stare convey his answer.

“No,” she whispered, a wave of defeat flashing across her face. “Y-you are saying I need to improve my dancing skills as well?”

Ambrose could not help the small chuckle that tumbled out of his lips at her reaction. He supposed he should just be grateful that she was even taking his lessons seriously and that she was honestly asking him. Even if what he was about to tell her was completely different from what she had predicted.

“We will have a discussion about your dancing later,” he replied, spinning her around again, noting how well she kept her steps in line. “When we have had more than one dance to judge. But my advice is to not look at yourself at this moment but at the other dancers. What do you see?”

Barbara looked at him as if he were trying to play a trick on her, and he chuckled again.

“I am serious this time,” he told her, slowing them down as the lively song drifted into a lazy one. “The couple to your left. What do you see?”

Ambrose subtly looked toward them, showing her it was all right, and relaxed when he saw her do the same from the corner of his eye.

Good . Listen to me. I am trying to help you.

He knew that Barbara had never wanted to marry. He knew that in some ways, he was just as bad as her father by taking advantage of their financial troubles. But the least he could do was teach her. Not just how to catch a husband, but how to spot a husband worth catching.

“They are… closer… than we are,” she murmured softly.

They both turned their eyes back to one another, that soft blush renewed in her cheeks.

“That is Lord and Lady DeWinter,” Ambrose explained quietly, subtly shifting his hand lower down her back.

He felt her stiffen beneath his touch, but she did not falter in her steps.

“They have been married for six years and are still very much in love with each other.”

Barbara’s eyes drifted back to the couple, an almost wistful look taking over her face. Ambrose had never seen her like that, and it brought back that unfamiliar feeling in his chest.

“How can you tell?” she asked him softly.

He pulled her closer subtly, so smoothly that she did not even notice.

“Look at the way they touch each other, then look at the couple to your right,” he instructed, his voice dropping into a gentle demand for obedience.

A sliver of pleasure snaked through him as she obeyed, her graceful chin turning from left to right in an almost sensual motion. More for himself than for the lesson, he shifted closer to her again. Her neck, so graceful and long, was achingly close to his lips. The urge to find out what her skin tasted like overwhelmed him and he drifted forward.

“They are somehow touching and not touching at the same time,” Barbara answered, her eyes still on the couple to her right. “Their hands are in the proper places, but they do not look at each other. They do not… connect.”

Her voice sent an awakening jolt through him, and as he blinked, he found himself a breath away from actually kissing the delicate flesh below her ear. Stilling his breath, he pulled away ever so slightly and cleared his throat.

“That is right,” he replied, his voice coming out raspy. “That is the Viscount Green and his wife by arranged marriage. They have been together for a decade.”

“So long, and still they don’t…” Barbara swiftly turned her head back to the couple to her left, unaware of how close she had just been to being kissed. “They have not grown into that?”

The question came out in such a sad, sympathetic tone that Ambrose started to wonder if he truly knew who Barbara was at all. First, her confession of wanting to be free in her femininity. Her blushing reaction to genuine compliments. Now her raw empathy toward loveless matches. This was not the sharp-tongued, thick-skinned woman he knew that so often broke social norms. It staggered him a little.

“When you dance with a man,” he forced himself to add, his voice close to her ear, “notice how he touches you.”

He trailed his fingertips lower down her back, satisfaction howling through him when she shivered, gasped, and turned her eyes back to him. With her eyes on his now, he gripped her hips and brought her closer, their mouths nearly touching.

“Make sure there is warmth in his touch,” Ambrose told her, trailing his fingertips gently, ever so subtly so others would not notice, over her back and down her arms. “A man who touches you with coldness can bring you no pleasure.”

“Ambrose,” she whispered, her sweet, lemonade-scented breath gently fanning his lips, “you are too close.”

“You need to know what it feels like,” he told her, his voice dropping to a purr as his hands slid up to hers.

Her soft, slender palms slid into his rough, larger ones, and he squeezed them rhythmically, massaging and not squeezing so as not to hurt her. Barbara’s breaths began to come out in shallow bursts as if even the soft touch was too intimate.

“People will see you,” she whispered, the look in her eyes flitting from rage to pleasure to pleading as the dance came to an end.

“They are seeing me, and they are getting jealous,” he murmured, bringing her hand to his mouth as the dance ended. “Which is precisely what we want.”

Unable to help himself, he pressed his lips to her knuckles as his blue eyes locked onto hers, and he ran the tip of his tongue over the smooth, tiny knuckle of her middle finger. A gasp, so soft that only he could hear, left Barbara’s lips as what he could have sworn was desire glazed her eyes. It stayed there only a moment though, before all of that rage he knew so well returned.

He was impressed by the restraint she used as she slowly lowered her hand to her side and smiled at him sweetly.

“I am going to slap you in your smug face the next time we are alone,” she said through her smile, her voice as sweet and pure as angels.

Undoubted desire rose within him again as his nemesis rose from the kitten-like slumber he’d lulled her into, and he smiled back at her with smug superiority.

“If it gets me a moment alone with you, you can slap me all you want,” he stated wickedly. “For now, though, you should concern yourself with the two gentlemen approaching. That is Lord Dashwood, twenty-five, the eldest son of an earl who already has access to his family’s fortune. The other is Lord Violetti. He is a noble of some sort from Italy but has chosen to reside among the English ton. Very wealthy, and owns quite a few impressive houses. Perhaps if your dancing is as good as you think it is, it is them who will be requesting alone time with you. Not I.”

Barbara was torn between thanking Ambrose and shoving him away when he bowed to her ever so chivalrously then made a polite hand gesture toward the two gentlemen approaching her. She was almost taken aback when he made the introductions, speaking about her and toward her as if she were a princess. His words made both rather handsome gentlemen look at her even more approvingly.

“I shall leave you to choose which gentleman you should like to dance with first, Lady Barbara,” Ambrose said with the utmost politeness, bowing to her a final time. “I am most thankful for the dance.”

“It was my pleasure, Your Grace,” Barbara replied, her senses returning to her all at once.

She curtseyed to him, rather artfully, and even raised her right hand. An approving wink flittered across his right eye so fast that she wasn’t sure that it really occurred before he accepted her hand and bowed to kiss her knuckles. Barbara nearly gasped aloud as she felt the tip of his tongue dart across her knuckles again, but she composed herself within a second and smiled as if it did not happen at all.

“Lady Barbara, would you be so kind as to honor me with your next dance?” Lord Dashwood beseeched, bowing to her.

“Pray, Lady Barbara, show me the favor of the next dance,” Lord Violetti countered in his charming Italian accent before she could respond.

Feeling her confidence soar, Barbara drew on a most charming smile and batted her eyelashes. “You flatter me, gentlemen,” she replied humbly as she curtseyed once again. “Lord Dashwood? I believe since you asked first…”

Lord Dashwood smiled triumphantly at her as he offered her his hand, while Lord Violetti seemed to struggle to maintain a polite expression.

“It would be an honor, Lady Barbara,” Lord Dashwood replied, taking her to the dance floor.

As his hands found their proper place for the next dance, Barbara thought of Ambrose’s advice on what to notice in a man’s touch. Going into her steps, she tried to focus on what she felt, how she felt as Lord Dashwood made brief but polite contact with her person. She tried to study whether it was cold, but all she could notice was how different his touch was from Ambrose’s.